Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Portrait of Le Carillon

Le Carillon is a humble corner
café/bar in a quiet part of the 10th arrondissement, a block from
the Canal St Martin. Now we all know its name, but a few days ago it was just a
nondescript local drinking spot; a remnant of the days the 10th was far
from fashionable;a bar that hasn’t
changed a thing about itself as the neighbourhood has changed around it.

It has a run-down dusty
red-painted façade with a pollution-faded black canopy over its entrance and a
terrace usually strewn with mismatched tables and rickety chairs. The café
looks out on a 5-way intersection that faces Le Petit Cambodge, the bustling
pizza restaurant Maria Luisa, a little pottery atelier, and the corner of the
Hôpital St Louis that juts on to the rue Alibert, home to a regular Sunday
market.

The Carillon is the unassuming
centre of this little quartier, and,
to its owners’ total surprise, recently become popular: a growing number of bourgeois bohemians or ‘bobos’ as they
are known (with a hint of derision) packed tightly together smoking and
drinking on its terrace in the evenings. The place has been run by the same
group of Algerian male family members for way longer than the decade I have
been going there. Far from the glitz and glam of the ‘other’ Paris(es), this is
the Paris of the locals; the students, the artists, the talkers, the readers,
the musers, the sneaker-wearers, the gesticulators. The young, the old… a crude
mural painted into its side glass wall of casual people of all colours and
styles.

It’s local life: la vie du quartier. In Paris apartments,
you need to get out. This is where you come.

*

I started going to the
Carillon around 2004 when I was a student at the Lecoq Theatre School, and
living in an artists’ residence across the canal. My friend Jemma suggested we
meet there one night, and I agreed, though I would have much rather go to one
of the trendier joints around there: Chez Prune, La Patâche, Les Jemmapes… But
by then I’d learnt not to doubt Jem – she was always right.

There she is, perched at
the far corner of the bar, smoking a rolly, wearing some fabulous random concoction
of an outfit, a tatty book splayed on the sticky wood in front of her. Around
the room is a spattering of old men drinking alone but together, the floor a
thick carpet of butts. There is a cat. An old piano. A ramshackle collection of
tables and bench seats and wood chairs and cracked red and tobacco-beige walls
with scratchy mirrors hung along them. A wiry, hyper-energetic man behind the
bar smiles wide, furiously cleaning a glass with a teatowel. He chats with us
and I order the same cheap white as Jem and the sun streams through the window and
we drink and we talk and we are happy.

A pact to return, and we
do, and quickly Le Carillon becomes our favourite bar. Well that’s too strong –
it’s not a place we revere or rave about, it’s just where we always end up. Where
we always are.

*

There are places that
make you feel at home, even if you’re from the other side of the world. Places
you feel welcome. Like you belong. Where
everybody knows your name. In Paris they are rare, and when you find one,
you stick with it. You never change neighbourhood, for fear of having to start
all over again. Even moving a few streets can change your entire life dynamic. You
invest in your quartier, and it
rewards you. Places become like people. Like family. They matter.

It takes a long time of
regularly going to Le Carillon before we start exchanging names. I try to
remember them all, but the men’s roster is such that they appear and disappear
for weeks on end. Except Ahcene, the energetic one from that first glass of
wine. He always seems to be there.

It is now our regular drinking
spot during the week, and always on Sundays for the markets. The Marché Alibert
is a strip of convivial market stalls that open in the wee hours of Sunday
morning (not that we know anything about that) and start to close up at about
1.30 (we know a lot about that). We arrive ruffled and unwashed, hoping someone
has nabbed us a table at Le Carillon, in the sun if we’re lucky. From the
tables we have the perfect vantage point to watch the queues across the road,
waiting for just the right time to dash across, leaving someone guarding the
table full of coffee cups and ashtrays and newspapers to seize upon a chicken
from Rico or some fruit from Jacques or perhaps one of Mahfoud’s felafels.

Ahcene scoots out with a
café crème for me and a bise for each cheek. I tell him I wanted
to be more Parisian and order an allongé this
time.‘Eh beh…’ he says, and makes a joke I can’t understand, but I laugh
anyway, and drink the crème. Chairs are
added, subtracted, and added again as people arrive and depart, the coffees
turn to beers, a rice-paper roll from Le Cambodge, a pizza…

*

New Year’s Day 2008 is
Day 1 of the smoking ban, and Matt and I are huddled up at one of the Carillon’s
back tables, drinking beer, eyes glued to the floor. Down there is a beautiful orange,
red and beige mosaic floor. We have never seen it before, for the butts.

We would like to make a
joke about it with the guys behind the bar, but they are all outside, smoking,
kicking snow.

Ahcene storms back in
with a gust of cold air. ‘It will never
last, PUTAIN!’

But it does.

Another thing is gone
that day. The old men. Replaced by an attractive couple and their toddler,
sitting triumphantly on the bar, sucking on a dummy.

*

The quartier continues to change. Now it’s 2012, and we’ve finished
school, got new boyfriends and girlfriends, got married, changed jobs, our
friends have come and gone, we’ve gone and come. The Carillon’s tables are
sought after now, and we have to arrive earlier to get one, but we are older,
and there are kids, so we’re up earlier anyway. There have even been times
we’ve watched the marchands set up
their stalls, waiting for Le Carillon to open.

Ahcene is still hyper
and makes his jokes and I understand them now and make my own smartass réplique,
and then there is Frankie, and well, she softens everything. Ahcene’s lively
face shows a sweet new calm as he lifts her behind the bar, tucking her little
body under one arm as gets her orange juice. There is a dirty old dolly on a
shelf that looks like it’s been there for decades. She points with her chubby
hand to it. Ahcene pulls it down and hands it to her, telling her sternly she
must look after it.

The bigger kids laugh
and play, Ahcene tells them off, intercepting their ball and kicking it under a
table down the back. ‘GOAL!!’ The same coffees on the table in the ever-same
cups. The cat beneath. The remnants of a pain
au chocolat grabbed and devoured by a tiny pair of hands.

One day we arrive at the
Carillon and the roller doors are shut, an official letter sticky-taped to the
door. Closed until further notice.

We stand outside for a
long moment staring at the notice.

We don’t quite know what
to do with ourselves.

Those weeks Le Carillon
is shut the quartier seems to lose
its soul. Then suddenly it reopens as though nothing has happened. And the
rhythm of life resumes as normal, to our relief.

Time passes, new cafés
and bars appear in the area: a gluten-free bakery, cool coffee joints… Le
Cambodge down the street opens up a sister restaurant across from Le Carillon –
Le Petit Cambodge. Yes! Now we won’t have to walk the whole block to get our bobun spéciale. Now we can just migrate
there when those Carillon days turn to nights.

*

Just a few weeks ago we
were sitting outside Le Carillon, as usual, having drinks. The same cheap white
wine. Same watery beer. Same gentle, quiet bartender - Ahcene on a rare night
off. Same rickety chair, same old crooked table.

‘I wonder how old we’ll
be before this place changes,’ said one of us, leaning back on our chair.

*

Friday’s attackers
didn’t make their statement via the Paris institutions the world holds so dear,
those twinkling iconic places we all love and recognise. They hit at something
far deeper, more human, universal, basic: a human sentiment - the pleasure of
simple social moments in humble local settings. An indie-rock band. A
‘friendly’ match. A cheap glass of wine in a run-down local bar. A bobun. The simple, sacred joy we take
for granted of just meeting with friends to be together. In places that are
neither ostentatious, or brazen, or provocative, or denominational.
Unpretentious local bars in the 10th and 11th, the
Bataclan… It seems the target was a very humble kind of pleasure. The simple
joys. Sharing. Talking. Listening. The pleasures the French, and in particular
Parisians, have mastered for centuries, and epitomize.

*

The day after the
attack, a friend from our regular Carillon Sunday table went there. The bar was
locked: the world gathered outside taking photos, placing flowers, filming news
reports, constructing memorials. The men from Le Carillon were there behind the
doors, and saw our friend. They opened up and let him in, hugging him one by
one, in silence.

The Carillon is
pronounced Le Carry-On. I can only
hope that Ahcene, and his family and friends, and our friends, and their friends,
and all the quartier, and all of
Paris, and all the world, will.